A resident of Tacoma, Washington, whose name was in the papers after a construction crane that he was manning, collapsed in Bellevue two years ago, is suing The Seattle Post- Intelligencer and it's parent company, Hearst Communications Inc., for defamation. He alleges that the newspaper defamed him by unnecessarily reporting on his criminal past and drug use in the weeks after the accident.
Warren Yeakey, 36, also alleges that the newspaper invaded his privacy and cast him in a negative light thus inflicting emotional distress on him. The lawsuit filed by his attorney in the Pierce County Superior Court last week also names Texas Newspaper Inc., which owns a stake in The Seattle P-I and the two reporters, Andrea James and John Iwasaki, who wrote the front page article in November 2006, as a defendants.
Yeakey's name was later cleared with regard to the collapse of the crane when state Department of Labour and Industries conducted investigations which revealed that a flawed engineering design had doomed the crane. Yeakey, the department ascertained, had operated the crane appropriately and could not be blamed for the collapse.
The crane Yeakey was controlling collapsed in Bellevue slamming into surrounding buildings and killing a resident, Matthew Ammon. Yeakey was injured in the crash.
The lawsuit states that the front page article in the paper, listed Yeakey's drug related convictions in the past and also detailed the terms of his last conviction in 2000, falsely implying that he was somehow responsible for Ammon's death. This story ran before the state department finished its investigation and did not highlight how Yeakey had 6,500 hours of experience operating cranes and how he had been off drugs for six years.
Although it's been two years, Yeakey's attorney, Matt Renda, stated that the hurt caused by the media coverage of the incident is still fresh in his client's mind.
Warren Yeakey, 36, also alleges that the newspaper invaded his privacy and cast him in a negative light thus inflicting emotional distress on him. The lawsuit filed by his attorney in the Pierce County Superior Court last week also names Texas Newspaper Inc., which owns a stake in The Seattle P-I and the two reporters, Andrea James and John Iwasaki, who wrote the front page article in November 2006, as a defendants.
Yeakey's name was later cleared with regard to the collapse of the crane when state Department of Labour and Industries conducted investigations which revealed that a flawed engineering design had doomed the crane. Yeakey, the department ascertained, had operated the crane appropriately and could not be blamed for the collapse.
The crane Yeakey was controlling collapsed in Bellevue slamming into surrounding buildings and killing a resident, Matthew Ammon. Yeakey was injured in the crash.
The lawsuit states that the front page article in the paper, listed Yeakey's drug related convictions in the past and also detailed the terms of his last conviction in 2000, falsely implying that he was somehow responsible for Ammon's death. This story ran before the state department finished its investigation and did not highlight how Yeakey had 6,500 hours of experience operating cranes and how he had been off drugs for six years.
Although it's been two years, Yeakey's attorney, Matt Renda, stated that the hurt caused by the media coverage of the incident is still fresh in his client's mind.
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